Daemon

willingly in exchange for our lives. I try every day to be the man he’d have wanted me to be. The man he would have been proud to call his son.’ He looked up at Philips. ‘If there is anyone on this earth I want to share my name with, it’s you. But I will never trust a government, Nat. They’ll use my identity to get at the people I care about. And I won’t put you in the position of having to choose between your future and me. We both know it will come to that. And I don’t have a future.’
    Philips stood motionless for several moments. ‘Please don’t think I was trying to—’
    He waved it away. ‘I know.’
    After a few moments she turned and for the third time headed for the door. ‘Good night, Mr Ross.’
    ‘Good night, Dr Philips.’
    Philips didn’t look back until she’d closed the door behind her.

Chapter 41:// The New Social Contract
    A bleak dawn radiated over a tract home lost in the grid of a lower-class subdivision. Inside, a Nigerian immigrant stood guard in front of a stark steel door tagged with graffiti and patches of peeling gray paint.
    He had the lean, wiry frame of someone raised on significantly less caloric intake than the average American. His skin was almost literally black, and he attentively watched a grainy security monitor focused on the street outside. He was attentive in the way that only a recent immigrant from an impoverished land can be. Grateful to be in Texas, America.
    He considered for a moment the money he was earning – what it meant to his extended family back in sub-Saharan Africa. He kept calculating and recalculating how long it would take him to save enough money to also bring his sons to America.
    A stubby AK-47 variant with a folding stock hung from a strap on his shoulder, its fore grip wrapped in duct tape. It was his job to identify people seeking entry to the cutting house. He took his job very seriously.
    The sounds of people talking and shouting echoed from rooms deeper inside the building. A smattering of tribal languages. The place was bustling with activity. Just another day in the heroin trade. He despised drugs, but economic realities were economic realities.
    He noticed the security monitor flicker for a moment. After that, the image skipped vertically. He frowned at it and played with the vertical-hold dial. In a moment the image stabilized, and he nodded in satisfaction.
    Then the steel door exploded, sending red-hot metal fragments into his stomach and throwing him down the hall.
    A dozen armed men in black full-body armor and ballistic helmets issued through the opening, shouting, ‘POLICE! FREEZE!’
    The initials DEA were stenciled in bold white letters on their breastplates. Shouting filled the back of the house. They were entering back there as well.
    ‘POLICE! FREEZE!’
    More shouting. The steel bars were ripped from a picture window by cables linked to trailer hitches. DEA agents jumped through the empty frame, rushing forward shouting, ‘THIS IS THE POLICE! PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS!’
    A dozen half-naked men and women scattered, screaming and running to flush bags of heroin stacked on tables in a bedroom.
    One of the dealers rolled out into an interior hallway with a pump twelve-gauge shotgun. He turned just in time to see the iridescent faceplate of a body-armored DEA agent blocking his exit. The dealer cut loose, blasting the agent into the narrow closet door at the end of the hallway.
    Women started screaming.
    The dealer pumped another shell into the chamber. ‘Ya’ll some badass motherfucker now, huh?’
    He leveled the gun and blasted the nearby door frame as another DEA agent leaned out. The wood frame and a chunk of drywall disintegrated.
    But the first agent he shot was getting up.
    The dealer chambered another round and blasted the man again, sending him back into the closet door.
    Click-clack
. He blasted him again.
    Click-clack
. Then again.
    He watched in amazement as the agent struggled back to his feet. The dealer raced to find shotgun shells in his pockets. The DEA agent leveled a multibarreled pistol at him.
    Braaappp!
    The dealer looked down at his white T-shirt. A rapidlyexpanding bloodstain swept across it. He crumpled to the floor, shotgun over his knees.
    The other men in the house threw down their weapons as the agents barked commands at them to get on their knees with their hands over their heads.
    Another set of agents moved among them with plastic hand ties, lashing hands behind backs.
    But the